The data centre, based in the modern broadcast hub known as Maidstone Studios in Kent, UK, provides fresh air free cooling up to 80% of the year and regularly achieves PUE figures below 1.15 (ratio of total facility power usage divided by IT equipment power usage).
Business-critical cooling specialist, Airedale International, was selected for its pioneering free cooling technology and high specification chillers, and for its expertise in designing and integrating controls logic across multiple protocols, hardware and systems.
Airedale’s ACIS™ solution controls the Air Handling Units (AHUs), Airedale Ultima™ Compact super quiet (30-450kW) and Ultima™ Compact FreeCool (75-450kW) chillers in addition to Custodian’s legacy Building Management System (BMS), providing full N+1 redundancy.
The ACIS™ controls software also manages temperature and humidity in the data centre and, through integration with Custodian’s BMS, provides 24/7 monitoring. With a system using direct fresh air in a data centre cooling environment, Airedale software is critical in ensuring temperature set point and humidity are maintained.
The collaborative approach resulted in a scalable solution, with infrastructure and pipework installed at the start, allowing further air handling and chiller units to be added with minimum disruption and without incurring unnecessary additional cost as data centre demand grows.
Airedale’s dedicated commissioning team ensured that the system performed to specification from day one, with on-going critical service back-up and preventative maintenance provided by Airedale’s expert national service team.
Robert Williams, Technical Director of the award-winning Custodian Data Centre, said: “Airedale provided us with a fast, reliable and most importantly bespoke solution. From initial business to present day they have provided us with continuous support”.